I just finished watching Anthony Powell’s “Antarctica: A Year on the Ice” and having spent over a year on the Ice now (minus 3 weeks for a round trip home) it puts many things in perspective. It’s nearly the end of October, and my brain does finally feel like it’s returned to a nearly normal … Read more
Like any addiction, it comes at a cost. We may walk away being able to pay off student loans, debt, or go on a nice vacation to recuperate, but we trade this intense period of work & play in this extreme environment for those possibilities.
So we have 3.2% of station touching science. The other 96.8% of the people are keeping this place from being overrun by the environment and preparing it for the wave of people at summer. It gives you an interesting perspective on how harsh this place is when you realize that your overhead has to be so high.
Midwinter dinner is now less than two weeks away. It sort of a dual celebration of the northern solstice and the middle of our deployed winter, although they coincided perfectly. In my case it’s pretty close as I’ll be here till mainbody/summer, but for those who are out at winfly, it’s a little late. In … Read more
The most remarkable joy of my return to the Ice 7 years later is the amount of joy and laughing I’ve be apart of during these last two seasons. This last summer I started by everything being last minute and so was delivered into the Network Operations Center (NOC) without knowing any of my direct … Read more
This is my 3rd season in McMurdo, two Summers, and now a Winter. In many ways I’m still a neophyte as compared to some of the 15+ year veterans and some things are still new to me. For most of my readers, you’ve never been to the Ice, so I want to elucidate on some … Read more
This week has been all about the sun, the moon, and the stars, well after the unexpected plane that landed here on Monday. It’s been exhausting, but amazingly fun. Some of you may have read my previous post on the mechanics of final sunset, which was an interesting research project. Following that post I went … Read more
Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How, although the latter is generally tacked on. I’m the “Who,” and hopefully an older and wiser “Who” then when I started this this written journey. Having started to write again for my blog, and being more self-aware of time, feelings, motivation, and having the perspective of time, I … Read more
Last time I was down 7 years ago, I wanted to do an inventory of all the strange vehicles on station. I didn’t remember that I wanted to do that until just a few minutes ago when a friend back home asked me about the how a Pisten Bully–hereafter referred to as a PB as … Read more
McMurdo is currently going sky crazy. The sun is barely up for 6 hours now, which means we have extend periods of darkness. (i.e. walking out the door and the sun is down until I'm at work for 3 hours) We also have extend periods of twilight, close to 90 mins or more of the … Read more